Walter Brown, a member of our advisory board and a longtime friend and supporter of Lamont, was the recipient this week of the National Maritime Historical Society's David A. O'Neil Sheet Anchor Award. He was honored Wednesday evening at a gala dinner at the NY Yacht Club in midtown. Chuck Callan, another member of our board, together with the
Purdys, the Ryans, and a few other Lamonters, were able to celebrate with Walter. Not being a sailor, I had to look up the definition of "sheet anchor." It definitely fits Walter's character. Congratulations, Walter!
Most of this week was taken up with director search meetings. The search continues to be on schedule. Thanks to those of you who were able to participate in the open meetings, and to those of you who provided feedback. Your comments are a very important part of the deliberations. The best way to comment is by email to directorsearch@ldeo.columbia.edu,
or to me personally.
I'll be visiting NSF next week to talk about ways to extend the Langseth's operating schedule. Every day we're able to schedule above a threshold lowers the ship's daily rate, which ultimately benefits both NSF and our own marine ops. This particular discussion at NSF will center around how we might streamline funding from non-government sources.
News came this week that Gavin Schmidt has won the first Climate Communication Prize from AGU, to be presented at the fall meeting in December. Realclimate.org, for which Gavin has been a leading contributor and organizer, has been a consistent, dare I say fair and balanced, climate site, with a much better signal-to-noise ratio than most of the junk that passes for commentary on climate issues. Gavin's 2009 book, co-authored with Josh Wolfe, is "Climate Change: Picturing
the Science", and well worth a spot in your library.
Looking forward to the John Diebold Memorial Lamont Chili Cookoff next week. John D. retired the trophy many years ago, presenting the taste testers with an essentially unbeatable vote-getting machine. Apart from a great recipe, he had another strategy to garner votes: make a large batch! Chili should not be tasted in small amounts.
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